Oolite Bulletins

Disembodied wrote:

El Viejo wrote:

Transition to what?

I was being polite – enormously hard for me as a Scot!

I can imagine! We've got your lot at Wembley next year for the FA's 150th - that'll be 'fun'!
I was in Glasgow way back when the Tartan Army uprooted the goalposts at Wembley - the locals were going nutty!

El Viejo wrote:

Transition to what?

Bad to worse?

I've always held that the British (note: not just English) problem as regards international football is that it's not taken seriously enough by the players as well as the international and club managers. CLuibs won't release players to train together, international managers won't push hard enough to actually make the team work as a team rather than a bunch of strangers having a kick-about and players spend too much time and effort doing advertising, merchandising, womanising and other various "isings".

Europe and Central/South America take the sport seriously and put serious effort and money behind the international squads. British associations don't. The fitness levels of British players compared to European players is pitiful. It's not helped by the fact that the majority of the really good club players in Britain are imported - thus leaving little space to develop home-grown talent. That's the root of why the international team's players are scattered across so many clubs and why they aren't used to playing together. So it's all stuffed at both ends.

And when it all goes wrong, they blame the manager and sack him then get a new guy in, so there's no continuity in leadership and management style.

That's my take on it, anyway.

I'm snickering now. I imagine I'd be rolling if the conversation turned westward...

SandJ wrote:

Is it against the rules for us to just send Man Utd or Man City or Arsenal or Spurs or Liverpool as the England team. By all means compensate the club for the inconvenience. At least that would stop the "Oh, I'm not used to playing with him" stuff.

The problem is that most of those teams already play for other international sides ... in March this year, Arsenal's 3-0 victory over Aston Villa was the first time two English players have scored for Arsenal in the same game since 1997. Think about that for a moment: that's fifteen years. That's frankly outrageous.

A lot of British (as opposed to just English) football's problems are right there. In large part it's because of our very low top rate of tax, and generally slack attitude (over the past few decades) towards the super-rich. It's meant that even relatively small clubs in the UK can offer higher take-home wages to overseas players than some quite big foreign teams. So rather than nurture home-grown talent, we ship it in from overseas: it's cheaper. Of course, it means our pools of home-grown players are very small, which translates into rotten international performances ... such is capitalism. I favour the USA's strongly and laudably socialist attitudes: the way the NFL works to bring in new players would gladden the heart of Lenin! (But they don't like it when you point this out: I did so in a bar in Philly a few years back and goodness me, the fuss and kerfuffle.)

El Viejo wrote:

I was in Glasgow way back when the Tartan Army uprooted the goalposts at Wembley - the locals were going nutty!

The goalposts and quite a big chunk of the pitch, too ... there are lawns all over Scotland with little patches of grafted Wembley turf in them.

Disembodied wrote:

The goalposts and quite a big chunk of the pitch, too ... there are lawns all over Scotland with little patches of grafted Wembley turf in them.

Yeah, I'll bet there are! Highly amusing, as it happens!
They're extending the Euros next time to twenty-four teams, so the riff-raff will be able to qualify... hey-ho!

Disembodied wrote:

The problem is that most of those teams already play for other international sides ... in March this year, Arsenal's 3-0 victory over Aston Villa was the first time two English players have scored for Arsenal in the same game since 1997.

So is there any point any more in teams having geographic names? It's not like Sheffield Wednesday players all come from the steelworks any more. Would it make more sense to just name them after the club's owner or the sponsor?

"I see Nike Shoes are playing Adidas Shirts at the weekend. Coming?"
"Nah, I'm going to watch the Dunlop Green Flash Trainers play Gregg's Pasties."

Can't wait for the match between the Bing Rednecks and the Google Greenbacks!

SandJ wrote:

So is there any point any more in teams having geographic names? It's not like Sheffield Wednesday players all come from the steelworks any more. Would it make more sense to just name them after the club's owner or the sponsor?

"I see Nike Shoes are playing Adidas Shirts at the weekend. Coming?"
"Nah, I'm going to watch the Dunlop Green Flash Trainers play Gregg's Pasties."

Just a matter of time and money ... we've already got the Emirates stadium, the Sports Direct Stadium, and all the rest, and we have premiership teams running about the place with the URLs of internet loan-sharks (4,214% APR – the Black Monks would blush at that) plastered across their chests. It's an erosive process: indignities drip-drip-drip slowly on, incrementally wearing away any idea that things could or should be different. Look at the Olympics: what happened to the amateur ideal and "Swifter, Higher, Stronger"? Drowned in a welter of corporate advertising. What could be more sporty than a Coke and a Big Mac? Apart from Dow Chemicals, that is?

Smivs wrote:

Can't wait for the match between the Bing Rednecks and the Google Greenbacks!

That would depend on whether the Bingies manage to find the stadium ...

Disembodied wrote:

... we've already got the Emirates stadium, the Sports Direct Stadium, and all the rest, and we have premiership teams running about the place with the URLs of internet loan-sharks (4,214% APR – the Black Monks would blush at that) plastered across their chests. It's an erosive process: indignities drip-drip-drip slowly on, incrementally wearing away any idea that things could or should be different...

Yeah, even FC Barcelona have now signed a shirt-sponsor deal - one of the world's richest clubs (and owned by the fans, in effect), but they're deep in debt, of course.

Hmpfh. What was that just now. Not at all expected.

Well, they beat England earlier! Italy are clearly going to sweep all before them.

Well it was better to lose to Italy than to lose to Germany...

I'll be donning my sombrero and supporting Spain on Sunday... but I have a feeling that Italy will win it!

The twists and unexpected turn of events have my head spinning. England's defense held Italy goalless but they scored two in short order against mighty Germany. Four years ago I picked Spain to win while still in group stages. Now, I am not sure.

Smivs wrote:

Italy are clearly going to sweep all before them.